


Shot through the heart and you're to blame

by Anonymous



Category: MXM (Band), Produce 101 (TV)
Genre: AU, First Meeting, M/M, bartender dong, gambler min, the rating is for mentions of violence, this is fluffier than the tags suggest i swear
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-27
Updated: 2018-04-27
Packaged: 2019-04-28 16:46:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14453538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Someone interrupts Donghyun's dull evening at work.





	Shot through the heart and you're to blame

It's a slow night. The TV is playing a football match on mute for the bar's half a dozen patrons - only one of whom is watching. Old Mr. Cho's been putting rock ballads on the jukebox for a couple of hours now and, at this stage, everyone's just praying for his wife to come and take him away. Outside a light rain falls on a spring night still carrying the breath of winter. It's enough to keep most punters away.

 

Not, honestly speaking, as though this bar is generally very busy on a weeknight. Only if there's an event - engagement party, retirement do, 50th birthday party, that kind of thing. Then the locals pile in and things can get real rowdy. But it's just a little pub in the suburbs, rarely attracting in anyone below the age of 40. A friend of a friend of Donghyun's uncle runs the place. That guy hadn't been concerned by Donghyun's lack of bartending experience on the premise that his patrons would find Donghyun too cute to get aggro with him. The hypothesis has worked out well. Donghyun learnt the ropes of being a barman quickly. A lot of the older gents like to use him as a listening ear. The women are fond of feeding him. Some of them, once they've got a few glasses of red wine inside them, are also fond of squeezing his bum. But Donghyun can cope with that. He has a decently paying job and frequently receives free food. If this entails him accepting the occasional 50-something drunk lady copping a feel, well, that's a burden he can bare. 

 

Of course, no one's squeezing his bum tonight. Apart from Old Mr. Cho silently head banging to Bon Jovi, no one's doing very much of anything. Donghyun stifles a yawn in his fist. The match on the television reaches half-time and Old Mr. Shim spits into the ashtray. The match is between two Scandinavian sides. Donghyun hadn't expected Old Mr. Shim to get so animated about Scandinavian football. He's thinking about asking him, just for something to talk about, when the door slams open and someone far too young to be in a dive like this barrels in. 

 

The man has straight black hair, his long fringe plastered to his face thanks to the drizzle outside. He has old blue jeans, black converse and a seasonally inappropriate white, long-sleeved t-shirt on. Although, when he reaches the bar - sort of smacks into it owing to his momentum - Donghyun notices the man is wearing at least one t-shirt underneath the first, the pale yellow collar peeking out at his long neck. He's tall, maybe even taller than Donghyun, and his frantic grin is full of distractingly bright white teeth. He could be anything from 18 to 28. 

 

"Hide me. Please. Please hide me. Just for, like, 10 minutes. Five. Five minutes. Please. OK?"

 

"I... What?"

 

"You won't get in any trouble." The guy takes Donghyun's hands in his. And, _oh_ , although his hands are cold, his skin is soft. Not like Donghyun's, who's hands bear witness to nights of barwork and days of obsessively strumming his guitar. And his eyes are deep and sparkly. The sort a person could drown in. "I just need to disappear for a few minutes. Then I'll be on my way and you'll never see hide nor hair of me again. I promise."

 

That awful attempt at a reassuring smile he's doing grows stiffer. It looks almost painful to maintain. 

 

"Yeah, OK. Just, er." Donghyun hesitates. This was clearly a terrible idea. But he scans the guy again. He can't be hiding much under that outfit, so Donghyun's somewhat a little kind of sure that he's not about to get stabbed. And this guy looks so very relieved. His long thin arms are shaking while his hands grip the bar hard. "You can stay back here. Where I can keep an eye on you." Donghyun tries to look stern there. However, when the guy grins, it's so shiny it makes Donghyun's gaze flutter. 

 

He mouths a thank you and scrambles behind the bar. For a person so tall, he manages to fold himself up impressivey small and Donghyun shoves a box of lemon slices over with his food to conceal this weirdo further. Not two minutes later, three thugs march in. Donghyun thinks he recognises them, has seen them around the neighbourhood. He figures he might be imagining it though. There's a barbecue joint nearby that holds poker games after hours, and there's always men like this hanging around there - big and bulky, cheap cologne and cheap suits, the stale smell of cigarette infused into their skin. 

 

"We're looking for someone. We know he came in here, punk," one of them growls into Donghyun's face. His nose crinkles, lips twisting into a scowl. If this person leans just a little further, he'll see. He'll definitely see. 

 

"Tall guy in a white t-shirt, right? He came in here and ran straight out the side entrance."

He points off to the darkened annex, half-partitioned by a wooden screen, where they sometimes host functions. At weekends there'd be a few punters in there, function or no. On a deathly slow night like this, though, there's no point opening it up and spending electricity on the lights. The thugs nod and march away into the cold night. Only one of them takes the trouble to threaten Donghyun that he'd better be telling the truth. Then they're gone. Old Mr. Shim gives Donghyun an unimpressed look, and returns his attention to the match. Old Mr. Cho sings along to _You Give Love A Bad Name_. The cause of Donghyun's rapidly beating heart unfurls himself and is suddenly standing much closer to Donghyun than the barman was prepared for. 

 

"I owe you. I seriously owe you." He's grinning again and Donghyun kind of wishes he wouldn't. But also that he would forever because even this weird, desperate grin he's got is really terribly pretty. 

 

"Please don't," Donghyun says. The guy rakes his fingers through his damp hair. Before he can say anything or point his smile at Donghyun again, the barman adds, "Do you want to leave out the back? The alley runs back into the housing estate or brings you to where the market is in the mornings."

 

"That's great. You're great."

 

Donghyun looks him over. The torn up jeans hanging off his hips. The wet t-shirts clinging to his lean frame. Donghyun clamps his mouth shut and turns to lead the way. This isn't someone he should get involved with. He watches the guy creep down the narrow alley, peek around, and then stride out into the housing estate as if it were his back garden, as if there weren't three men intent on breaking his kneecaps still roaming the area. Donghyun closes the door on the misty night and makes his way back to the bar. He mutters that he'd better not see any of them again - not the thugs and certainly not the weirdo that drew them there. And when Donghyun finally crawls into his bed in the wee hours of the morning, he's still hoping that weirdo and his distracting smile got home safely. 

 

***

 

Youngmin would like to make clear that he is not a cheat. He knows how to cheat at card games. Knows theoretically. In practice though, he gets this twitch and his ears get hot and even a 10-year-old kid would be able to tell what he's up to. What Youngmin can do is count cards. He's good at that. Very good at it. To the extent that people who ought to know better like to accuse him of cheating. 

 

It had been a while since he'd felt compelled to enter a serious game. His fiscal situation has been running smoothly for months. It seems like the season of skint-hood is upon them all, though, and Youngmin needs to pay his rent somehow or other. Maybe he'd forgotten just what it's like to find yourself alone with small-time thugs convinced you've shafted them, what it's like to have leather shoes stamping down until bones break. He remembers pretty quickly. And vividly. So he runs. His legs - which have rarely been good for much other than tripping on air and ensuring that he showed off his ankles in every highschool photo ever taken because his trousers were never long enough - carry him away faster than he thought possible. He obviously doesn't know the area as well as these goons do, so speed - and potentially wit - are all he's got going for him. 

 

At random, he takes a sharp turn. The road he comes into is more open than he likes. But there's a bar - Bran You Tavern, or something like that - its red sign illuminated by two lights, one of which is flickering towards its death. It looks dingy as hell. But Youngmin figures it's a chance. A chance not to get beaten to a pulp in a deserted street, where the cold mist is soaking into his bones. 

 

His heart leaps when he sees the kid behind the bar, electric lights casting shadows across his young face, the white shirt he's wearing too big on his skinny frame. He's cute. And, hopefully, much more likely to listen to Youngmin's blabbering than the crabby barmaid ahjumma Youngmin had been anticipating. _Take my hand, we'll make it, I swear!_ A song swells as Youngmin rushes up to the kid, doing his level best to offset what a crackpot he must look like with as winning a smile as he can muster. 

 

He's shocked when the kid agrees without much hassle - less shocked when the guys chasing him easily take the bait the kid feeds them and run off in the wrong direction. Youngmin would believe just about anything that face told him too. But there's still the possibility they'll come back. They could realise the barman messed with them and come back to 'even the score', as they'd see it. That kid lied for him. He's young and cute and has far too pretty a face for it to get smashed up by those goons. Even though Youngmin gets home OK, his winnings still safely stuffed in his socks - even though he no longer has a reason to venture back to that corner of town - he doesn't sleep easy. Not that night and not for nights after, always hoping that kid and his pretty face are still safe. 

 


End file.
